A Fantastic Fear of Everything Directed by Crispian Mills and Chris Hopewell Written by Crispian Mills UK, 2012 A Fantastic Fear of Everything is a film that Wes Anderson would make if he didn’t give a flying sausage about storytelling. It…

In Odd Thomas, the titular clairvoyant character (Anton Yelchin) can see dead people and bodachs (spirit creatures that alert him to future deaths). Working with the local police, headed by a chief played by Willem Dafoe, Odd goes around…

Opting for a rehabilitation program over jail time, Janey (Chelsea Jenish) discovers the hidden ramifications of her choice when she arrives at an isolated camp, where she is told by the strict “doctor” (Robert Nolan) that she, and the…

In the post-apocalyptic Bounty Killer, bounty hunters roam the wasteland and earn their keep by taking down white-collar criminals. One of the hunters, a guttural and scruffy Nathan Drake lookalike known as the Drifter (Matthew Marsden),…

Being trapped in a room full of zombies should be a bit more harrowing than the UK horror comedy Stalled would suggest. In the film, a hapless maintenance worker/janitor (Dan Palmer) gets trapped in the women’s lavatory during a company…

The world’s collective attitude and passion towards deep space exploration has petered out in the last few decades, and nobody, it seems, is more peeved about this than the makers of Europa Report. With grandiose talk of profound…

In an episode of Community, Britta (played by Gillian Jacobs) once said that an analogy is “a thought with another thought’s hat on.” It may be laboured, clumsy, and teetering on the gobbledygook, but what she said was not altogether…

A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III Written by Roman Coppola Directed by Roman Coppola USA, 2013 Opens Feb. 15 in Toronto and Montreal In the opening scene of A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, the titular Swan (played…

Hello I Must Be Going Directed by Todd Louiso Written by Sarah Koskoff USA, 2012 Opens Jan. 27 in Toronto It’s a strange epiphany when one realizes that following their life passion is a self-made path to nowhere. Movies have taught us to…

A Haunted House Directed by Michael Tides Written by Marlon Wayans and Rick Alvarez USA, 2013 Opens Jan. 25 in Toronto Have you ever opened up a history textbook and found that every single image of Josef Stalin was defaced with some sort…

For better or worse, films don’t exist in a vacuum. If literature derives from itself, and, according to Marshall McLuhan, the content in any new medium is always the same as in the old, then films don’t exactly have a wealth of…

On December 14, 2012, a young man named Adam Lanza broke into a primary school and fatally shot 26 people in the small village of Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Twenty of them were children, aged 6 or 7. On that day, no matter where I went or…

Django Unchained Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino USA, 2012 If you ask a girl about the nuances of makeup, she’ll probably tell you that great technique is one where you barely notice the result. Ask a filmmaker about the nuances…

Toronto - On December 4th, TIFF saluted the best of Canadian Cinema at the 12th Annual Canada’s Top Ten industry event, hosted by Sarah Gadon (Cosmopolis, A Dangerous Method) and Don McKellar (Blindness, Trigger). A panel of industry…

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning Directed by John Hyams Written by John Hyams, Doug Magnuson and Jon Greenhalgh USA, 2012 Although it looks like a generic action movie on paper, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning is actually a lot…

Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy Directed by Rob Heydon Written by Rob Heydon and Ben Tucker Canada, 2011 Ecstasy is defined as an overpowering feeling of happiness or uncontrollable excitement, an ethereal and trancelike state of…